To Laminate, or Not To Laminate?

Yes unless you want to re do it frequently

 

You can buy a 51in wide manual laminator for $250 on Amazon, it's much better than hand laminating a film.

The other option is spray or mop on a liquid laminate.

 

We liked our OrangeA laminator

 

You could always use a spray laminate. Get a rattle can or two of the stuff and there ya go. Much depends on which way the sign is facing and your geographical location.

 

You can do wet lam, you will need 2 people but it shouldn't take more than 5 min. Use a large window squeegee to lay it flat then a silkscreen squeegee to finish it. After a few of these you can buy a Seal laminator.

 

Just about any sign supply distributor. It comes liquid or spray. An 8x8 is not all that big to spray. Take maybe 10 minutes to spray all in one direction, wait 15 minutes and spray perpendicular to the first pattern. Let it air dry for an hour or two, before you play with it.

 

Have both on the shelves here. Both will get good reviews and some bad reviews. All depends on how well the people using it..... uses it. You can get an extra year or 18 months outta spray. About the same as rigid lam. Liquid will do even better. Again, do it correctly and it will last. We rigid lam more things than not, but the sprays are great for those little incidental things.

 

Being new to the print-side of things earlier this year, I had the same questions. I found that the laminate part of the process is very important, adding soooo much more durability to your work, etc. (also, anything not laminated will have the ink run off it almost immediately after wiping it down with anything stronger than a wet paper towel.) Bottom line- it was an unplanned expense, but you gotta do it or your wasting yours and customers time/money. Good luck...

 

The Big Squeegee works well enough for laminating, but only if you have a very flat work surface and there is a bit of a learning curve involved.

 

if you don't have a laminator, then don't bother. ....eventually, you'll see why a laminator will be a necessary addition to your business if you wish to continue down this road.

if you do manage to apply your graphic, without ruining your unlaminated print, and wish to finish it for durability....then any clear poly should do. same method as clear coating a painted finish. scuff/clean/spray or roll/pray.

 

I use Clearshield most of the time. Have had very good luck with it.

 

Roll on Clearshield with a small low hair roller if you can't buy a decent laminator.

 

not to stte the ovviou, a laminator can be a mjor expense.
i got 2 of mine (seal 44" & daige 38" from craigslist & ebay)

i wish the seal was a 54"

 

I'd recomend getting a laminator (see if you can lease one). We still got our 44in ledco signmaster from when we had our Summa DC3. Then when we got our 1st mimaki (jv33-130), but before we got our gfp 455th, we would use frog juice or clearshield. Frog juice was better but was more expensive & finicky to apply. The downsides with wet lams is drytime taking up table space (we usually did it at the end of the day so it wasn't in the way) & you got to be careful with dust and bugs getting stuck. We usually used a foam roller and drug it across the frog juice with a screw in it to keep it from rolling.